The NFL in April signed a "lucrative new deal with a company called Sportradar, which is based in Switzerland and little known" in the U.S., and while the deal involves distributing live data from games, the upstart company is "well known in another industry with an insatiable need for live statistics: online sports betting," according to Glanz, Armendariz & Williams of the N.Y. TIMES. The NFL's deal, "sweetened with an equity stake in Sportradar, underscores the league’s ambiguous position on the shifting ground of gambling in the Internet age." Sportradar’s rise in the U.S. "raises a question: whether the company and its investors, along with the leagues, are positioning themselves for a loosening of restrictions on sports gambling." On its website, Sportradar’s gambling arm, called Betradar, "reports that it services 'more than 450 bookmaker clients,' but it is the troubled legal status of some of those clients that has drawn attention in the industry." Sportradar’s business model has "received a harsh public airing in Britain, where courts decided" that the company was "improperly copying sports data from a competitor and selling that data to betting websites." Former Stats LLC CEO Gary Walrath, whose company preceded Sportradar in working with the league, said that the NFL was "aware of Sportradar’s focus and legal record." He said, "We brought this to their attention." He added, "The league is very familiar with what’s going on, in contrast to what they say publicly." Walrath said that he "outlined both Sportradar’s core business and the court cases, but that they seemed to make no difference to the league." He said, "What Sportradar was looking to do there and in the NHL was to buy their way into the North American market for the day when sports betting becomes legal." The NFL said that its agreement "was with the United States arm of the company, Sportradar US." The league said, "Sportradar US does not generate revenue from gambling-related activities for any sport" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/19).
